


The Wanderers Library

by orphan_account



Series: Are We Cool Yet? [27]
Category: SCP Foundation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:15:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27562909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The letter Doc reads is quoted word-for-word from the Wanderer's Library page.
Series: Are We Cool Yet? [27]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1974532
Kudos: 8





	The Wanderers Library

**Author's Note:**

> The letter Doc reads is quoted word-for-word from the Wanderer's Library page.

Not four days after we escaped the Foundation, and our world's being turned upside down by yet another group of anomaly-hunters. Well, not hunters, exactly. They're not trying to contain us, but they want us to come with them. And... there was nowhere else to go. It was only a matter of time before NTF found us. Apprehended us. Maybe killed us. So, the new group.

They call themselves the Serpent's Hand.

There was a gate, or entrance, or something-- it's all a bit fuzzy. They called it a 'Way'. And we found ourselves in a library. At least, I think that's what it is. It's huge and full of people and full of... full of things like us. Just walking around. Freely.

"What is this place?" I ask.

Breena, the girl who found us turns to look at me. At all of us, caked in mud and leaves and dust and sweat. "This is the Wanderer's Library. The once place the jailors can't reach."

Mask quirks an eyebrow in skepticism.

"Jailors?" Peanut asks.

"Your Foundation. Some of us here fight them and others, or believe in different things. You can stay or leave, help us or not. But the Library is a Haven for the anomalous. The ethereal. You are free to find a nook to stay in and read what you may. But you must respect everyone who stays here."

It's quite possibly too good to be true.

Brenna hands me a slip of paper, and I jerk my hand back in case she touches it and falls into a sleep.

"Are you okay?" Mask asks, as she wanders off. "Is it the Pestilence?"

"Actually, I... I don't sense it here. Nothing. Nothing at all."

We walk forward, almost in a daze, all of us staying close together. Peanut keeps freezing and zipping forward, then freezing again when he's seen. There are no odd looks, just a few mildly curious ones. There are men and women here, but the four of us don't stick out either. It's the strangest thing.

I wish Larry could have seen it.

Towering, glossy wooden shelves reach almost out of sight, some with ladders propped against them, many filled with books, and others with people. 

And it keeps going. Going on and on, until we reach a far wall. There are a few empty shelves here, and the full ones are mostly books. It's quieter here, a little darker.

"So we... just pick one, I guess?" Mask says.

"I think yes."

We're all tired. We all need a place to rest. Peanut zips somewhere above us, looking for a place where he'll be shielded from view and free to move.

Mask climbs up, too, looking around, but I pause. Shy's hovering to my left in a way that suggests he wants to say something.

"What is it?" I ask gently. He walks over to stand next to me and a little behind, the way he's done often with us all, so none of us accidently see his face, but we still see the general shape of him. It makes for easier conversation.

"There's so many people here. I-I don't want them so see me."

I expected something about Larry. Shy's probably thinking about him, but embarrassed to talk about it. "I'll find a cloth or mask or something for you, if you like."

I look through my bag. I have a few scraps of cloth I saved a long, long way back when I was running out of bandages. I kept them, in case it ever happened again. They're thin enough that if you put them to your eye, you can still see through them, and eye holes would not be hard to make.

I pull them out and lay them in front of Shy.

There are three, one white, one yellow with stripes, and one pink. Almost without hesitation, he picks the pink one and puts it up to his face. "Uh," he says after a moment, "could you help me?"

"Of course." He sits down so I can reach, and I tie it gently but firmly around his head. I risk a look at his newly covered face. He doesn't seem to mind. "I could make eye holes, if you like."

"No, this is fine." He puts up a hand, as if to make sure it's on. "Thanks, Doc."

"Anytime. And if you ever need to talk about him, I'll be here."

"Oh... yeah. Thanks. But I'd rather just be alone for now."

He finds his own ledge. Mask, Shy and Peanut have all picked ones stacked on top of each other, the lowest (Masks's) still two levels up. He gestures for me to come up, but I shake my head. They said we could read things. It's been a while since I've held a book besides my own. Maybe reading will shed some light on the Serpent's Hand.

I find a few things, and sit at one of the tables at the end of the shelves. I start with the slip of paper Brenna handed me.

Welcome.

To anyone willing or able to read this: This is for you.

We are the Serpent's Hand.

We are a movement, unified by a common belief:

That humanity and all the other peoples of the known worlds do not deserve to be kept in darkness and ignorance.

The Serpent's Hand doesn't coordinate as a group. We are a loose collection of splinters. Our enemies tend to misunderstand this — for instance, the Foundation's obsession with L.S., a person most of us have never met. Or the Serpent's Nest, with their shifting identities. Yes, they are all leaders, because they are people we respect, people we take advice from, and some of us will follow their plans. But they aren't all of us.

There's no special way to join the Hand. There are no secret rituals done in basements or closets. We hold no elections for our leaders. If you want to become a member of the Serpent's Hand, all you have to do is decide you are a member of the Serpent's Hand.

Most of us are ordinary people, though our enemies do not understand this. We are ordinary people who embrace the anomalous, the supernatural, the ethereal. We oppose its suppression. How can we not? Our friends, family members, and sometimes we ourselves fall outside of the bounds of normalcy. Every single one of us has experienced the anomalous. We are the things in heaven and earth that were not dreamt of in your philosophy.

To the heralds of traditional power such as the SCP Foundation, the Global Occult Coalition, and most world governments, the anomalous is a slowly spreading poison, threatening to destroy everything civilization has worked so hard to create.

But anomalous people are people, and the anomalous itself is not a threat merely for existing. Yes, it presents danger, but so do germs and meteors and forest fires. Suppressing knowledge of something will only make it more dangerous, and keep all of us huddling, frightened, in the dark.

When normalcy starts hurting the people who have to live under it, to try to cure a 'poison', normalcy is itself the poison.

The SCP Foundation and the Global Occult Coalition are playing the role now that the Catholic Church played when they imprisoned Galileo for discovering that the world revolved around the sun. Their practices and beliefs are the death of knowledge, the death of science, the death of light.

Take the Wanderers' Library as an example, the place where the Serpent's Hand makes its home. The Library is the largest repository of knowledge the worlds have ever seen, the Holy Grail for those seeking to understand the preternatural. And yet, both the SCP Foundation and the Global Occult Coalition have been thrown out of this place that welcomes all. Why? Because they tried to destroy it, or take it for themselves so no one else could have it. Because of this, they are condemned to blunder in the dark.

Everyone reasonable agrees that people should defend themselves against supernatural threats. But how can you protect yourself if you burn and bury the books and imprison or execute the people who could tell you how? Would you try to protect yourselves against nuclear weapons by telling everyone to pretend they don't exist?

The Serpent's Hand were barred from the Library too, once. There was a reason we could not re-discover it until 1967. But no more. We've learned from our mistakes.

To any members of the GOC and the Foundation who may read this:

We are growing so large because of you. We were more like you, once, just one more inbred secret society hoarding occult knowledge to ourselves.

Then the Foundation began increasing its scale. There have always been Jailors, but not like this, not in millennia. Yet, still, they kept themselves in the dark, with only their leaders ever knowing the full extent of the world on Earth outside the everyday. So they were tolerable, for a time.

But then came the Seventh Occult War, the Foundation Civil War. The rise of the Global Occult Coalition — the Bookburners, the Big Brother — and the grand-scale campaign against the paranatural community that followed. The Coalition became the oppressive shelter to which the cowards of the paranatural community fled. A shame that there were only 108 slots, and only for human-dominated organizations. Or perhaps not a shame at all. Our old selves did not seek membership then, and we are fortunate for that.

So the Serpent's Hand rose up. Not out of desire, nor fear, but out of clear and pressing need. To keep all peoples from being chained forever in the dark.

We, the Serpent's Hand, ask both of you this:

How many KTEs does the Global Occult Coalition catalogue? It must seem like the supernatural is a vast hydra — two new heads sprouting for each that is cut off. How long will you keep cutting?

How many SCP items does the Foundation contain now? Two thousand? Three thousand? Five? More? How long before there is no more room for prisons to be constructed? Will you put the whole world in a containment cell?

You admit it to yourselves, privately. The anomalous is on the rise. You cannot hold back the future forever.

You are the monsters you are so afraid of. Let go of your fear, and join us in the light.

And if you will not... if you keep imprisoning and killing innocents, if you keep forcing the world to stay in the dark... then you will meet the fate of all the slavers and murderers in the worlds' history before you.

We will free those you keep imprisoned. We will rescue those you try to kill.

The Garden is the Serpent's place.

We are the Serpent's Hand.

~ M.

By the time I finish the pamphlet, I find myself crying. If this is real... oh, dear God let this be real.


End file.
